West Africa planning and review meeting

23-25 October 2012
Modern City Hotel, Tamale, Ghana
Back to the event agenda

---

Day 2 - Wednesday 24 October

Challenges in Mali and Ghana

Presentation of Augustine Ayantunde about Mali challenges

• Socio-economic challenges:
  • Predominance of young population: child labour
  • Crop farming and livestock as main sources of hh income: value addition of agric products, vulnerability to market shocks (need to reduce dependence on revenue from cotton)
  • Inputs: access to agric inputs for crops other than cotton and access to financial services; strengthening farmer associations and private input suppliers; seed systems including planting materials.
  • Transhumance in both locations: increased competition over pastures and water (farmer-herder conflict); strengthening capacity of local institutions in conflict management and in documentation/enforcement of local conventions.
• Biophysical challenges:
  • Major constraints to crop production e.g. insufficient agricultural inputs, unfavourable climatic condition, soil degradation: post harvest,
  • Livestock constraints: bridging the feed gap through food-feed crop, fodder production, crop residue management, strategic supplementation; maintaining traction animals in good body condition; access to vet services & improved management; upgrading local breeds.

Q&A/comments:

• Comment: There is also the challenge of extension services and access to information for farmers.
• Q: Privatisation and focus?
• C: Exchange among farmers, farmer-to-farmer learning etc.
• C: On access to resources (land & facilities): access to resources for women and youth.
• C: Depending on time frame, the issue of land access: Mali has a lot of agric land able for expansion. Land grabbing might be increasing over the next decade, aggravated by rural exodus etc. Urbanites trying to exploit rural lands.
• Q: Farmer-herder conflicts - can you elaborate? It's also a problem in Ghana.
• A: Many issues: timing of the movements. Local conventions stipulate dates. But the process is not formalized. Another issue is the settling down of pastoralists. More livestock pressure now. Blur between traditional farmers and pastoralists that are settling down. More livestock for the same resources - increased competition. Where there are strong local institutions, the issue of competition is minimal. If institutions are weak (e.g. political reasons, ethnical reasons...).
• Q: Less dependence on CMBT? There is a market pull for other value chains.
• A: Yes this needs to be re-emphasized.

Presentation of M. Buah about challenges in Ghana

Many projects working on only one special issue but we need integrated crop-livestock.

Key constraints:

• Poor soil fertility
  • Traditional farming systems breaking down under human/livestock pressure
  • Too little fertilizer applied because they can't afford it or find it (not available) - both mineral fertilizers and organic inputs are required to improve soil fertility
  • Integrated crop-livestock systems could improve soil fertility in short fallow or continuous cropping systems; intercropping with legumes to restore/sustain soil fertility
• Pests and diseases of crops and livestock
  • Particularly to legume such as cowpea
  • Commercial production of cowpea in N. Ghana not feasible without using insecticides
  • Major insects of cow pea are flower thrips, legume pod borer etc.
  • --> IPM involves integrating biological control, cultural practices such as modified planting date, using pesticides, disease/pest-tolerant cultivars.
• Parasitic weeds such as striga
  • Striga hermonthical on cereals, striga generioides on legumes - strig due to poor soil fertility/structure, intensification of land use through continuous cultivation and expansion of cereal production.
  • --> Possible to use planting trap crops, hand roguing, application of inorganic fertilizer etc.
• Drought
  • Decreasing rainfal / increasing temperatures
  • --> Rainwater harvesting, live barriers, supplementary irrigation, minimum tillage, mulching, bunded basins and tree planting.
• Competition between crops and livestock for resources
  • Soil cover and organic matter replenishment, livestock feed, housing, craft materials, energy source.
  • Crop residues provided highly valued fodder for livestock - feeding livestock in the dry season is a major constraint.
  • Free grazing
  • --> Integrating crops and livestock e.g. promote crops, use crop residues to feed animals who produce manure that goes to the soil etc. But most farmers won't follow this.
  • Cultural and economic value of livestock in the Guinea Savannah Zone. Livestock is part of the dowry, is used for traction, provides meat, milk, hides and manure, used as an investment and insurance against risk, used as a means of transport, can be converted into prompt cash in times of need, used for ceremonies, paying bride price etc.
  • --> Advantages of integrated system: Maintenance of the soil productive capacity, product diversification and higher yields and quality at less cost, reduction of crop pests and of rural-urban migration and creation of new job opportunities in rural areas. E.g. cereal-legume rotation and intercropping.
• Weak institutional mechanisms
  • Weak extension services: research, extension and farmers weakly linked; Poor communication leading to low adoption of promising technologies generated; extension workers do not possess adequate knowledge in all crop & livestock production issues. Other projects are competing for the AEA's time.
• Conclusions:
  • Use of productive but more sustainable management practices can help resolve these production problems.

• Comment: The seed bank management in Australia has a way forward. Hand roguing should be done before flowering. We're using legumes. In the North, maize is resistant but sorghum etc. not so. Improved varieties rarely do well against striga.
• Comment: Southern Mali is not drier than Northern Ghana. The amount of rainfall is the same but hte pattern is different: in U-E you have one month more of rain than in Koutiala and this has some consequences. In some way, N. Ghana is drier because e.g. in Tamale you get 2 extra months of rain. In Ouagadougou they have the same duration of rain season but 200mm less than Bamako. One of the assets of Africa RISING is that we are comparing 2 areas that are similar and different at the same time. Drought becomes so prominent here but not so in Mali.
• Q: The integration you are talking about: what are we integrating, at what level? In Mali I see integration of crop-livestock-market-nutrition. In the cereal-legume systems, over 50% of children under 5 are malnourished. When I look at the Ghana presentation it looks only at crops-livestock. Are we looking at integration of production and nutrition?
• A: We are mandated to integrate crops, livestock, trees and shrubs to improve whole-farm productivity, nutrition and ecosystem stability.
  • At HH level, crop and livestock has been integrated for a very long time. We need to focus on integration at which scale. Our entry point is the household.
• C: Mechanization and the implements we need - in Ghana we once considered traction very seriously and it's now getting reemphasized. When integrating systems we need to look at mechanization technology because it has a lot of potential for integration e.g. processing.
• Q: A lot of actions have been designed around this kind of issues e.g. systemwide crop-livestock project which included all these elements, farming systems programs etc. The problems are persistent. What is the real challenge?
• A: Since we are providing all the answers to questions etc. I want to touch on them: Dowry: That is a real issue about the family. Who is the farmer tomorrow? We heard about migration, new policies, children going to school and not going back to farming. If the family is in place we are sure of the sustainability but the other, bigger, challenge is starting with us here because of our attitudes. How do we perceive what we are embarking on? What is intensification. Do we agree on SI? How do we package this so that it can be taken up. We say we have been doing this year over year etc. but the crux is to best integrate all these components. But in practice, we don't work on sustainable credit and inputs that should go with the technology. How will we address this? What implements go with integration and intensification? Do we want to see simple machines work on this? Policy support? Simple machines to process crop residues don't exist. This links up with the issue of extension - weak extension services. We are now talking about integrated intensification with systems-based technologies. We need to work with new extensionists to work on this and we are part of this problem. In the case of water, N. Ghana has a serious situation. If there's no water there's no progress. How can we harvest all of this?
• Comment: Good political will in countries in Ghana/Mali: The BMGF will put a lot of money in Nigeria and in Ghana because of 'good political will' in these 2 countries. There are challenges there. To take up innovation we need good political will. What is the situation in Ghana and in Mali right now.

Preparation for group work

Presentation on research boundaries and principles

With AR we cannot address all the constraints. We work in a research project and research is perhaps not the main issue but the funding we have is to help CG centres to support CGIAR research programs in Dryland areas and Humid tropics. We find enough entry points for agricultural research to make a contribution to these constraints.

Boundaries:

• Working on selected sites or sites to be selected in Mali and Upper West
• Program framework with revised objectives, outcomes and outputs
• Budget (no budget for now for year 2) and time frame
• No technology development - instead we do testing, validating and adapting (combinations of) innovations

Principles:

• One single project with different components
• Farm HH as intervention domain
• SI through integration of systems and combination of technology components
• SI is about producing more output from the same area of land while reducing negative environmental impacts and increasing contributions to natural capital and environmental services
• Stepwise approach towards SI
• Targeting different HH types withdiff erent resources and options for intensification
• Constitution of R4D platforms for cooperation and co-lelarning, including private & public sector to deliver on SI at scale
• Identification of critical entry points:
  • Tech for productivity enhancement, for NRM, for income generation, for knowledge management
  • Innovations related to social and institutional arrangements
  • Combination
• Working as multi-disciplinary teams
• Ethical principles:
  • Relationship with farmers and handling data provided by farmers
  • Data ownership - shared by partners
  • Publication rights (shared by partners with acknowledgement of those who originally collected data)
• Issues that matter to USAid: nutrition, gender, NRM, policies for food security and focus not only on bio-physical issues.

Presentation by Asamoah Larbi about the Africa RISING Niche

What is the niche for Africa RISING?
At the household there are crops, trees, soil and water, livestock as well as cross-cutting activities such as R4D platforms, markets, institutions, policies, nutrition.

• Q: What about integration among crops?
• A: In a system you might end up with various crops. Farmers have maize and sorghum etc. At HH level that integration can be considered.
• Q: How would you reconcile (??) and participatory selection of value chains?
• A: That is why we are here in this workshop, to find solutions and ways forward on this type of issues.

Group work presentations on day 2

Upper West region group presentation

• Drought: need to look at weather forecasting sytems in the region and improve + explore indigenous methods of weather forecasting
• Research ideas: are there adapted varieties for crop-livestock integration
  • Promotion of varieties that are drought-tolerant or escape drought
  • Promotion of dual purpose varieties - varieties that will produce foddre without comprising grain production
  • Introduction of vegetables
• Causes of low productivity: mindset with farmers considering farming as a way of life instead of a business entity

Reactions:

• 3 issues are not very clear:
  • What are entry points for integration? Drought? Feed-food crops etc. ok but how?
  • What are researchable issues that we really want to address? e.g. Indigenous knowledge what will we do with it?
  • I was missing the specificity to your region. This is generally applicable but how can we get a bit more specific?
  • We think a lot in terms of constraints but working on integrating all of them in constraints fragments our work. But we can also vision the outcomes and work backwards to develop solutions e.g. what Karbo and Sibiry are doing in CCAFS.
  • It's useful to segregate interventions if they're more process- or technology-based. Technology-based interventions could be nested in the process-based interventions.
  • Scientists consider AR as a way off working/addressing constraints which is a reactive way. You don't intensify to react to a challenge but as an opportunity.
  • Weather forecasting: I wouldn't bet too much into it for West Africa for the next 2 decades. In that region you have a lot of opportunities to work on watershed integration, using Burkina Faso experiences which will have an integrative value.
  • You might want to emphasize agroforestry.
  • In Arusha B. van Lauwe was mentioning an institution that is providing real time weather data.
  • I miss sthg on post-harvest handling.
  • Nothing is mentioned on modelling.

Upper East region group presentation

• Researchable areas:
  • Integrated soil/water management
  • Integrated crop-livestock management

Reactions:

• Q: What do you see as the linkages between soil and nutrition?
• A: Crops, growing in a particular soil, uptake nutrients to the soil and deposit in the edible portion, impacting nutritional value.
• Q: What's water doing to the market?
• A: On the diagram, arrows are going to the market and come back.
• C: Across the border Burkina/UE there's inter-cropping going on. Isn't vegetable cropping an option for Upper East?
• C: 2 community vegetables: tomatoes and onions etc. In irrigated sites, farmers can produce vegetables...
• Q: In the central portion of your graph, is there a contribution from soil to income?
• A: Through interaction we lead to income and nutrition (nutrition is not necessarily a direct result).
  • It happens through market drivers.

Northern region group presentation

We propose different interventions:

• IWRM
• For value chains we think about linking farmers with input/output dealers
• What research topics to work on?
  • Small scale mechanization (cropping production, transport, seeders, weeders, processing).
  • Soil & water conservation measures (prevalent in Burkina Faso), integrated soil fertility management... Crop rotation etc.
  • Institutional arrangements that enhance crop-livestock systems e.g. how do you organize farmer groups?
  • How to improve the quality of biomass?
  • Irrigation, fodder, cover crops etc. which have to be edible to farmers; medicinal plants;
  • Sensitization

Reactions:

• C: What's positive is that they managed to do this in short time.
• C: In terms of research ideas, the question is: what's new? It's not very specific...
  • We talked a lot about innovating in livestock management systems. What institutional arrangements to overcome low productivity, what feeding systems etc.
    • We are looking at approaches that will look at the system and identify entry points leading to those outcomes. How do you intensify sustainably?
• Q: Why did you separate soil and water?
• A: It's difficult to separate but in other environments there are clearly different interventions.
• C: Thinking about cover crops, they don't have to be edible, they should be useful for the soil and for livestock e.g. leguminous shrubs that can be integrated in the fallow systems to provide feeds for the livestock.
• C: You're doing this integration at landscape and market level and this is sthg new. I'm surprised to hear that seeds are a major problem. It seems to be a low priority for me.
• C: We are working on sustainable intensification. Is micro-dosing one way to do this?
• C: When we are talking about nutrition and we are looking at agriculture, how can we use agric to improve nutritional status? It's the outcome of what people are eating. We need to shift our thinking in terms of calories. We have reached that limit with calories. The shift we have to look at is about the quality of the crops.
  • Yes and it came up in our conversations - in our group we discussed livestock as a way to complement quality.
• C: I heard something about community manure etc. but I'm not very clear with that. In the Northern region, we have a project and livestock was an after-thought there. Housing was considered important. Communities built their community house for livestock there. What about community incentives to make this work?
  • That could be sthg to be pilot-tested.
  • We talked about UW, UE and N in both regions and there were some common themes. It would be great to come up with common activities across the groups.

Mali group presentation

• What are entry points that we can leverage?
  • Seed enterprises: value chain, quality control/management and business skills
    • Strengthening farm enterprises' capacity for seed production (multiple crops).
  • Land use management and fodder production (soil/water conservation and use, community grazing management), transhumance, forest management, local institutions for managing the above, small ruminants fattening and poultry, fishery.
  • Research hypotheses comparing a) integrated crop-tree-livestock opportunities and b) building social cohesion for community grazing management, transhumance and local institutions will facilitate integration/intensification.
• Design and sampling options: sample structure for structuring.
• ...

Reactions:

• C: Land use management relates to community grazing - we could use those options across both countries.
• C: Mali is getting ripe for mechanization, perhaps it could help some labour shortages.
• Q: What are you targeting as a focal enterprise?
• A: ??
• C: For land use management, if there's no return scheme and profitability there is no adoption. If you want to go into fodder production you need to look at promising options. You can't exclude cattle fattening in Southern Mali.
• C: Mechanization is the combination of different power sources (animal traction, power tillers, tractors).
  • It's not only cropping but also transport, processing.
• C: I was suspecting there would be a lot more about cattle and milk but it seems it's not an important issue.
  • But for nutrition it is important.
• Q: About the conflict of transhumance, do we have resources to look at this?
• Q: Can we build capacity on post-graduate training?
• A: Yes.
• C: In the region between the 2 Voltas there's an increase of cattle herders going to that region. In the Northern Region, there's an opportunity for double-cropping. Can't we increase livestock residency time in N. Region as they migrate through the region?
• C: About organizing principles and seeds, don't forget livestock seeds - shouldn't we be talking about input delivery systems?
• Q: Nutrition issues and increasing market access doesn't seem to be an issue. What about soils?
• A: We didn't finish our discussion yet and we want to discuss this then.
• Q: Can the group elaborate on land use promotion? Is that sthg we can use for R4D platforms?
• C: About seed enterprises: we should work on input enterprises to work on wider issues, going beyond community level including private operators.

Research output 1 group presentation

• IFPRI's dev domain data require more granularity, so we need to include ethnic/linguistic layers, livestock density, LGP, landscape physiography/elevation - the procedure applied in Ghana can be replicated in Mali and IFPRI will continue leading this.
• Identification of action research sites: Add statement in project document on consultation with local partners - need to identify Mali units of analysis similar to Ghana districts; activity can be executed concurrently with previous activity. Key participants: Carlo, Chris, Sibiry, Larbi, Tahirou; Bridging the scale gap in site selection should not only be through partners/expert opinion but also informed by more granular GIS data; flexibility still possible in action and/or control sites finalization in UER / NR.
• Inventorize current FtF investments in Mali; opportunity to expand existing innovation platforms into R4D platforms (more dynamic, proactive); No treatment site where there is no R4D platform (control sites will be selected outside the intervention domain of R4D platforms); In Mali, potential scale mismatch between admin divisions and critical mass of villages for R4D platforms.
• Baseline information: What HH survey instrument for the BL? What level of customization for AR objectives and approaches?
  • Issue of subcontracting for BL survey administration: IPA or likes? Level of subcontracting? Training only?
  • BL data will not be used to revise action/control site selection
  • BL data may be used to guide deployment of technology-based interventions
• Construction of farm household typologies: IFPRI (Naomie) will lead with IITA (Bernard) inputs for CRP 1.2 areas and ICRISAT (Gatien) inputs for 1.2 areas.
• Inventorize innovations: work has started with IFPRI but we think that a lot falls under implementing centres (IITA / ICRISAT).
• Identification and prioritization of innovations addressing major constraints: Participatory modeling: what do we mean? Perhaps more like participatory scenario analysis.
• Sequencing, responsibility, funding: See table.

Reactions:

• Q:Very good job. Is this last table in line with IFPRI?
• A: (?? missed the answer)
• Q: What will the baselines actually monitor?
• A: There's a list of indicators in the research design. That's not the total list. There are standard indicators to measure impact in the M&E framework. Additional ones come from the type of innovations in the field.
  • We'll look at productivity, scalability etc. but we need to look at specific indicators related to specific activities. Finalization of the survey instruments will be done when the final list of innovations is there. We need 2-way communication for the teams that implement the 2 activities so they can develop their indicators.
  • We're going to work with implementing teams. The custom indicators will be identified together with the R4D platforms.
• C: We have a request for the baseline to include information on nutrition and consumption.
• C: You might want to work with CORAF on the repository of innovations as they also work on this.
• Q: We have some baselines in Mali - will we make use of it?
• A: It informs what will be done. Maybe you already covered the sites we are working in but if not we need to do some others.
• C: We need to ensure livestock is covered.
• Q: Only IITA and ICRISAT are mentioned.
• A: We didn't want to mention specific CG centres. People providing inputs to these activities are from many more centres.
  • We only mention IITA and IFPRI as lead agencies. IITA is not present in Mali so we also mentioned ICRISAT (coordinating inputs.
• C: We need to ensure innovation is there.